Interracial dating and marriage statistics

Researchers found that the insula, a part of the brain that registers disgust, was highly active when participants viewed the photos of the interracial couples, but was not highly engaged when viewers saw the images of same-race couples, whether they were white or black.“There’s a significant difference between the activation of the insula between interracial and same-race couples,” Skinner said.In a survey of attitudes about relationships, the students reported little disapproval of interracial couples.But photos of interracial couples triggered activity in a part of the brain that registers disgust.“We chose to limit our investigation to black-white interracial romances because previous research indicates that whites show the strongest opposition to black-white interracial couples,” according to the study.“We chose to avoid adding an additional layer of complexity by restricting our investigation to heterosexual couples.” In the first experiment, 152 students were asked whether they accepted mixed-race relationships.In the second study, 19 participants had their brain activity monitored by electroencephalogram (EEG).

If you would like to read about the exact procedure J. Huang and I used to calculate these numbers, visit the Statistical Methodology page.

“The way we have been interpreting that is that people are experiencing a heightened level of disgust when they are socially evaluating or viewing interracial couples relative to same-race couples.” Researchers said there is a link between disgust and dehumanization, and therefore they sought in the third experiment to determine whether disgust “leads to dehumanization of interracial couples.” They studied 226 students, some of whom were shown 10 disgusting images, such as a dirty toilet or people vomiting.

Viewers were then shown images of same-race couples, mixed couples and silhouettes of animals and humans and asked to press a button as quickly as possible to indicate which images showed animals or humans.